


Gone

by sonshineandshowers



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Dark, Gen, Hallucinations, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers
Summary: Malcolm seeks a remedy to his hallucinations.For Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt Self-Harm. Please, please, please heed this tag.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 102
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> happiness will not be found here

When Malcolm needed to break from a hallucination, he slid a thumbtack into his thigh. A small prick, just far enough to break the skin. Far enough to spook the phantoms back within.

But the action was difficult in public. The tack too thick to easily make it through his suit pants, he needed to go to the bathroom and drop them to achieve the effect. By then, demons had had even more opportunities to slay him. He didn’t want to hide to get a salve he needed.

Next came the straight pin. Easy to use under his desk, stabbed into his thigh when his younger self hovered in the corner. When the girl found him. When his father got out. A prick, or two, or three - gone.

The plastic heads popped, and he couldn’t easily thumb the solid metal ones. Plus, they bent: at the top, bottom, in half when the force went through the pin instead of deeper into his thigh. Poorly made for stitching a man back together.

Looking through fasteners at the pharmacy, he found perfection: the T-pin. It had a fine enough point to breach the tailored weave, a sturdy trunk to maintain a straight stick, and a wide head he could grip. _It’s not real_ \- stabbed through quickly with his miracle find.

What was real were the few dozen bruises left behind. First only the left thigh, then both. First small, then wider as the stronger T-pin could withstand greater depth, as it got harder to get the figments to leave. He didn’t feel it. Sometimes it took three, four times to be alone at his desk, at the counter, on the couch, in bed.

It became routine, lighting the T-pins with a kitchen torch to sterilize them, sliding one into his inside jacket pocket and putting the rest into a reused bottle on the counter next to his other medicines. When his solitude was threatened, he’d pop the lid and pierce the beasts.

Up the stairs to the precinct, in the door to the conference room, and Malcolm was greeted with an uninvited guest. “Random drug test,” Gil pointed to the man, motioning Malcolm should go with him.

Malcolm followed to a triage area established near the records room. A quick pull of his hair, and he was back to the team. “They’ll find benzodiazepines,” he commented on reentering the room.

“And a special Bright blend of…something,” JT teased, miming pulling the right word out of the air and walking out the door with Dani, leaving the two of them alone.

“You clean?” Gil checked, watching Malcolm’s eyes.

“You still need to ask?” He held his hand to his chest in hurt.

Gil’s eyes narrowed, expecting a response. He’d need to wait for the official results, yet he wanted the answer from the source first. _Now_.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He hit a folder against Malcolm’s hand. “Go have fun with JT talking to our suspect.”

* * *

Sleep wouldn’t come. Malcolm got up to walk the loft, the sidewalk, the loft again, but nothing settled the zings of connections flying, trying to complete a profile. The chest at the end of his bed kept turning into _the_ box with a girl climbing out until he smothered it with a blanket. Then her hands appeared on the floor, reaching up for him.

Four AM, five AM - stab, stab, stab - up for a final time. He changed into spandex shorts and rolled out his yoga mat. Perhaps if he listened to the soothing voice walking him through poses, he could quiet the others.

But several poses in, another joined him. “Kid,” Gil called, simultaneously knocking on the door.

“Come in,” Malcolm returned, suggesting he use his key rather than waiting for him to answer it.

Malcolm was bent in dolphin pose, his head near the floor. “Sorry, I’m a little early,” Gil apologized. “I brought breakfast.”

“S’okay.” Malcolm extended into dolphin plank.

“Oatmeal with blueberries,” Gil announced, dishing out their meal into bowls.

Malcolm finished his routine in corpse pose, staying there a few additional moments.

“Going for super dead today?” Gil asked.

“Something like that.” He wouldn’t mind if the apparitions were _extra_ dead.

“C’mon.” Gil patted the stool next to him.

Malcolm sat beside him and took a spoonful of oatmeal. “What’s that?” Gil asked, brushing above his knee.

“Nothing - it’s fine,” he dismissed the bruises.

Gil looked across to his other leg and spun him on the stool. “Bright?”

Malcolm tried to twist back, yet Gil held him still. “What is this from?”

“Pins.”

“Like acupuncture?” Gil tried to understand.

“No.” His cheeks burned - now he felt like hiding.

Gil reached his hand up to Malcolm’s chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Did you get into tacks again?”

“Yes, but - “

Gil followed Malcolm’s gaze to his medicine bottles, finding the extra one at the end. Tipping it to the ping of pins tapping the lid. “How bad is it?”

“Both my thighs.” Malcolm smoothed his palms from his hips to his knees. “Helps the hallucinations.”

“Malcolm,” Gil’s voice broke, and he hugged him to his chest. He’d been worried about food, drugs, not - _this_. Not the re-emergence of a teenage, then college habit of poking his arms with thumbtacks, sometimes forcing them until they bled. Instead of papers, they held the heads of his visions.

“It’s been…awhile.” Of self-soothing, treating - _harming_. Since he’d last taken it upon himself to try to halt what the doctors could not. “I can’t feel it,” he added, like it’d somehow make the situation better, less raw.

Gil pulled back, holding onto his shoulders. “Can we go to the doctor?” Gil asked, leaving him choices he hoped he would not need to negotiate.

“Yeah - I guess so,” Malcolm told his knees.

“Find some pants,” he guided, cleaning their abandoned breakfast to the sink.

Malcolm pulled them on quickly and met Gil at the door.

“We’ll find something that helps, kid,” Gil encouraged as they walked down the stairs.

But Malcolm had. In his soft pants pocket, palmed in his hand. Decay reaching from the corner - stick. Martin manipulating his thoughts near the car - prick. Gil’s hand on his wrist, removing the pin from his fingers - gone.

Out the windshield, phantoms danced on.

* * *

_fin_


End file.
